The technology described herein relates to methods of and apparatus for displaying windows, e.g., for a graphical user interface, on a display, and in particular to methods and apparatus for use when composing windows in a compositing window system.
As is known in the art, many electronic devices and systems use windows for displaying information, such as a graphical user interface, game, demo, etc., to a user on a display screen (and for allowing a user to interact with an application or applications being executed). A common way of displaying such windows is to use a so-called compositing window system, in which the individual windows are first stored in (rendered to) respective window buffers, and then the individual window buffers (i.e. their content) are combined appropriately into a unified frame buffer for the display in question in order to display the windows to the user.
While such compositing window systems are generally believed to be preferable to systems where each window is rendered to the frame buffer directly, they can still require significant resources in order to be able to blend the different windows stored in the window buffers into the frame buffer appropriately.
The Applicants believe therefore that there remains scope for improvements to systems for displaying windows on a display.
Like reference numerals are used for like features in the Figures where appropriate.